


The CEOs' Mornings

by thricetroubles



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thricetroubles/pseuds/thricetroubles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And then he sat equal, as Mr. Martin Crieff, CEO and manager of Icarus Removals, facing Ms. Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, CEO of MJN Air."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The CEOs' Mornings

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The CEOs' Mornings  
> Disclaimer: Cabin Pressure is the property of John Finnemore and BBC Radio 4.  
> Acknowledgment: Many thanks to [persiflage_1](http://persiflage-1.livejournal.com/) for Brit-picking and Beta-reading the fic. All errors are mine.

This was one of those mornings.

Arthur had dashed out of the portacabin as soon as he arrived to see that weird bird he just saw when he was coming into the office with his mother, and Douglas was fashionably late as usual. So the portacabin was deserted except for Carolyn and Martin.

After offering Carolyn and Arthur a good morning, Martin had promptly returned to his mountain of unfinished paperwork. So he was a bit surprised when he saw Carolyn setting down their mugs on his desk, respectively filled with coffee and tea, then start to pull a chair to his desk.

This was the only signal he needed. Martin responded by pushing his paperwork mountain to the side, and putting his captain’s hat down on the paperwork, the one that signified him as a pilot and employee of MJN.

And then he sat equal, as Mr. Martin Crieff, CEO and manager of Icarus Removals, facing Ms. Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, CEO of MJN Air.

  
Neither of them could recall how this had gradually became a tradition, a tradition that they now called, rather jokingly, “the CEOs’ Mornings”. But when it was a morning with no flying, no emergency, and no Douglas and Arthur in the portacabin, then Carolyn would start making coffee and tea, and pulling up a chair, and Martin would stop whatever he was working on, just to talk about company businesses.

They talked about anything related to business, from how difficult it was to promote their companies without a proper website (“proper” as in “not made by Arthur” in Carolyn’s case) to matters of maintenance, and, more often, customer grievances – or more exact, grievances that their customers had been giving them.

These mornings were good for them, because for a CEO of a removals company with only one man and one van and unstable schedules, and a CEO of an airdot with only one plane and four crew members, running a business was hard. And the fact that no one around them understood what they were going through was always the hardest part in their businesses.

So, when Mr. Crieff sat there with a cup of coffee in his hand, he was free to share with Ms. Knapp-Shappey about how expensive it was to have a registered internet domain name and a permanent server space for the company website. Ms. Knapp-Shappey responded by supplying the information of market prices for professional website designers, both of them smiling at the mere mention of the word “professional” and bemoaned the expensive of setting up a website.

Of course Martin knew that Carolyn would never change the current website, the one made by her son (and the apple of her eye, though Carolyn would never admit it in front of anyone, not even Arthur maybe), but Mr. Crieff did not, so they talked on as if it was a real possibility. They even talked about the possibility of sharing the cost of a decent website designer, to see if they could host their company websites under the same domain just to save a bit. But even Ms. Knapp-Shappey would agree it was difficult to find a neutral name for the domain, one that could bring the two companies together. And Mr. Crieff remarked that it was indeed quite weird as the only connection was in Icarus being the first (failed) pilot in human history, and highlighting that bit might not inspire much confidence for the customers of MJN.

They also talked about the brochures, and both ended up agreeing that _that_ photo taken in Douz better not make it onto the cover as Mr. Crieff pointed out rather humorously that if he was Ms. Knapp-Shappey he would never show the photo to anyone, because he honestly would not want his customers to think that they would have to do the heavy-lifting themselves. And Mr. Crieff told Ms. Knapp-Shappey his secrets about how to cut the cost of brochures – instead of brochures, Icarus Removals distributed leaflets. Very small leaflets, so small that one A4 piece of paper meant 16 little leaflets. Ms. Knapp-Shappey wondered if they were too small for the customers, and Mr. Crieff shuddered, and said that it was the perfect size for people to put in their pockets so it would do nicely.

They then talked about how best to distribute the leaflets, Mr. Crieff shared about how to target different customers at different times: he would drive about putting leaflets in peoples’ mailboxes with different target groups at different times, like spring and autumn for middle to upper-middle class families who might want to move their houses because no one likes moving in winter; early summer and before September for students who would be moving back to home or school; and winter would be for companies and the occasional delivery jobs from the grocery stores in Fitton. After all, like MJN, no job was too small for Icarus Removals.

Ms. Knapp-Shappey remarked with a smirk that since Gertie could be anywhere on Earth at anytime, times and weather were not as big a constraint. Mr. Crieff smiled and reminded Ms. Knapp-Shappey of all the times Gertie got stuck at a snowed-in airport. Then Ms. Knapp-Shappey smiled as well.

  
They never formally stated a time for these mornings to end. They never needed it. Once they heard Douglas’s footsteps approaching the portacabin, or saw Arthur came crashing in, the morning meeting would stop. Ms. Knapp-Shappey would pick up her mug and start pulling her chair away as if her chair had just happened to appear besides Mr. Crieff’s desk for no reason at all, and Mr. Crieff would drink all the remaining coffee in one go, then put his captain’s hat on and ask if Arthur could make him another cup of coffee.

Carolyn would tell her Captain to prepare something, maybe it would be flight plans, or logs, or account books, and Martin would start pulling things from his mountain of paperwork. And he would start making some Captainy comment about how it was not safe to fly at such a low cost, etc., etc..

And then they became Carolyn and Martin again, until the next time when there was no one else except the two CEOs in the portacabin.


End file.
